If Sharif was democratically elected and nowhere near as dangerous as Jodie was led to believe, why are the streets filled with his soldiers shooting civilians, plus one mortally-wounded child soldier? That doesn't sound like the army of a good guy to me.
He may have became dangerous after he was elected.
There can rose armed opposition against him and country was already in civil war.
There's no indication that the militants we see executing civilians are loyal to Sharif. Also, Salim probably isn't a "child soldier" as such; he was on his way to visit his father at the tower before he was injured, and when Jodie spots him outside the base, he's playing with a ball, like someone his age would normally do. He was most likely only carrying a weapon to protect himself while he traveled across the city, rather than acting as part of an army.
How to pronounce "Aiden". WDK
Now this is a minor gripe, buy why is Aiden pronounced like "I-den", instead of "A-den" like it normally is (it being my name, hence the annoyance)? Is it just down to the French developers or is that pronunciation used in some parts of the world (In UK, where "A-den" is the used pronunciation.
Because a name can have multiple legit pronounciations. There are people whose name is "I-den", not "Ay-den", and who get annoyed if they get called the wrong way. It should be noted that in the game people who "know" Aiden call him by the former pronounciation, while those who don't use the latter.
Probably for the same reason why no one can pronounce "origami" in Heavy Rain. An inconsistency that no one bothered to correct.
The Two Best Friends Play have an interesting theory as to why it was spelled "A-den": he was Jodie's greatest aid and her worst burden.
Jodie's at a loss for words
People have been using the excuse of Jodie not speaking Farsi as an explanation for why she can't understand any of the people during "The Mission" - but what kind of CIA agent would get sent to a mission in an Farsi speaking country without at least a short course on the language?
It's quite possible that the mission came up quite suddenly - say, Sharif was unexpectedly elected and the CIA wanted him taken out, fast. With this being an in-and-out mission, Jodie wasn't going to have much contact with anybody, anyway, so her paranormal abilities most likely weighed stronger than her lack of linguistic experience. Additionally, there's some Fridge Brilliance to this: Jodie was being deceived by the CIA the entire time. It wouldn't do for her to overhear somebody refering to the "warlord" Sharif as "the President", would it?
Given what Jodie is told beforehand - that the last agent they discovered was supposedly dragged through town until only his head and an arm was left, it's maybe expected that not conversing with anyone was on the cards. Plus, as pointed out, if she could actually understand the language, she'd possibly start to question the mission more.
The real question is why the hell they're speaking Farsi in Somalia.
Do they really speak Farsi and not Arabic? I'm not a native speaker in either language, but I grew up listening to both and I am pretty sure that at least Salim (and maybe the others as well) is speaking Arabic and I even understood some words.
Farsi is language of Persia/Iran. That embassy, include clothing, look very Arabic.
The Route to Paradise
What kind of choice is this between life and death and when you know for a fact that death leads to paradise? You'll get there eventually, one way or the other. The death choice just seems really lazy and silly in this light - I mean, choosing the life choice would essentially give her both of them. (it becomes even sillier when you realize that Jodie herself had no reason whatsoever not to believe that deactivating the Black Sun would simply vaporize her and Ryan instantly, even if the developers seem to have forgotten all about it)
The point is that Jodie, throughout the entire game, is suicidal.
You might find the choice a bit harder if both Ryan and Cole die in the leadup.
You have the choice of going to straight to paradise right now. Sure, you'll get there eventually, but if you don't care to go through all that stuff, why not go there right now? Metaphorically, suppose you want to get a game. You can download it, or you can get in a car, drive a few miles to the store, and get the game. With the latter option, you can stop at the store along the way. Maybe you'll meet a cute cashier. You still get the game either way. But if you want to just save yourself some time, you'll just skip that and go straight to the downloading. Jodie can save herself some time and anguish (she's gone through enough of it) by just going to the afterlife here. On a more meta level, the choice is there because they wanted to actually show you the afterlife while still giving you the option of continuing with life.
While it does seem like a no-brainer choice, there are a couple of instances where taking the guaranteed, instant Beyond option could be preferable. Like if you're worried about being turned into a coma-induced plant for the rest of your life by the CIA.
They've done shit like this before in real life. Seriously, most of the actions they have done in the past to aid or protect the interests of their county have come back to haunt them in the worst possible way imaginable such as aiding the precursor of the modern-day Taliban or overthrowing a democratically elected government because they tried to nationalize the oil trade in their countries, aiding their own failing economy. I just don't understand why they had to lie to their own agent.
They didn't lie to their own agent - Ryan was perfectly aware of the truth. Ryan chose to lie to Jodie - Ryan knew exactly what her opinion on the matter would be and decided it would be easier for her to do her job if she didn't know the truth. The CIA was straight with Ryan.
Jodie not knowing Sharif
How did Jodie not know that Sharif was democratically elected before Ryan fed her the bullshit that he was a warlord? This sounds like stuff that anyone can look up in two minutes on Google.
Thought the news report on the plane showed that the Sharif was recently elected - meaning that Jodie was already in the field (hence, no time to research). CIA could also technically have censored the internet within their own base.
Unless she knew the internal politics of some random war-torn African country, there's little reason she would've known Sharif's name before her mission and her briefing was shortly before she was inserted. 55 Countries in Africa - how many leaders do you know?
Given that there was a rather large military presence there, as indicated by the camp Jodie was staying at, wouldn't Sharif's role in the country be part of casual conversation anyway?
Odds are Jodie's kept in just as much of a Gilded Cage by the CIA as she was during her childhood. She's not exactly a standard field agent; more like a secret weapon you only bring out when necessary. Keeping her on a need-to-know basis and monitoring her activity in all circumstances is probably crucial.
Jodie in the hospital
How was Jodie kept in the hospital during her coma in the Homeless chapter? No one she knew would have had the money to pay for such a long stay.
The homeless people? Apparently they weren't homeless anymore. A better question would be why did the CIA wait so long to apprehend her when she's practically vulnerable?
They probably made up some story about how she was Stan's niece and gave her a fake name. The CIA were looking for the crazy psychic girl, not some homeless girl in a coma.
What do you expect the hospital to do with a comatose Jane Doe? It's illegal in the United States (not to mention unethical) for a hospital to refuse to treat someone, whether they can pay or not. They'd send her the bill later, it would go to collections, and never be paid; a very common pattern in the US health care system.
On the subject of the hospital scene, how much would Jodie's muscles have atrophied after being comatose for several months? Would it still be minor enough to be able to walk? Also, aren't hospital windows (at least in the United States) fixed in order to prevent suicide attempts?
Remember how Aiden can heal Jodie (or anyone else he chooses) from any injury just by focusing on them? It's likely that he could keep her muscles maintained as well, coma or not. As for the hospital, well... not every facility is perfect.
The above point about Aiden healing her atrophied muscles doesn't really hold water. Later in the game we're shown that Jodie being in a coma (or unconscious in general) prevents Aiden from acting in the world at all, probably rendering him unconscious as well (that isn't 100% clear).
Jodie, Ryan, and the CIA vs the Player
OK, Jodie, Ryan and the CIA had basically tricked you into killing a guy who was totally not a warlord, but in fact the democratically elected president who promised to end the chaos that tore his country apart. You then begin to fall in love with Ryan. Um, why? Seriously, Ryan tricked Jodie into doing this, and near the end of the game, you can decide to have her develop a relationship with him? Is she just that forgiving/forgetful?
Ryan was Jodie's handler he had no choice but to feed Jodie that line, and get her to do what the CIA wanted. If he didn't the CIA would get someone else who would. The fact that he was ordered to be a lying bastard, doesn't MAKE him scum of the Earth.
He could have chosen to let the CIA find someone else. He could have told her that the target had to die and left it at that. Or, here's a novel idea: he could have told Jodie the truth and let her decide for herself. There are a lot of ways he could have handled the situation, and he chose the one option that proved he didn't give two fucks about Jodie as anything but a weapon.
Despite his initial dickishness, Ryan does seem regretful for how he's acted in the past. He's a soldier through and through, and that sort of explains why he acts the way he does during the game. He has to be cold and impersonal, and that's been directed at poor Jodie. He does ease off after he tricks her, and seems to understand that what he did really was pretty awful. Plus poor Jodie has had so few people in her life, she's probably prone to falling for someone at just the slightest hint of affection.
Wounds heal and she had at least a year to recover before running into Ryan again and a few weeks of being forced to work with him and likely needing to put her anger aside. Once you get past the anger, there were some lingering feelings back there.
It'd be one thing if you could decide to have a relationship with him, but even rejecting him at every possible point in the story still results in Jodie kissing him at the end.
The Timeline issue
Why, on the timeline that's displayed in between each "level" or "chapter," is the prologue at the end of the timeline? It's clearly set after the train and chase scene, and can't possibly take place after "Black Sun" due to Nathan's appearance in it. The only chapter that's shown to take place after it is the epilogue. Every other scene on the timeline is in correct chronological order, except for that one. Did David Cage drop the ball, or was this some sort of tactic to intentionally make the players think there was more story after the Black Sun level?
Confused me too until I went back: the prologue isn't the police station which you'd think it'd refer to but when Jodie is setting up the framing device at the VERY beginning of the game. That takes place during her months alone in the woods/as she's telling her story to Zoey.
The part you're referring to is the part titled 'Broken,' the 'Prologue' ends when we stop having a close up of Jodie's face.
The Homeless ending
The ending to Homeless bugs the crap out of me. When a bunch of jerk teenagers lock her in a closet and call her a witch Aiden can lock the doors and set the house on fire. When her adopted dad verbally abuses her, Aiden can try to choke him to death. A bunch of assholes beat her over the head with a baseball bat? Aiden sits around with his spectral thumb up his ass. And we've seen before that Aiden has no problem moving around and doing things when Jodie is asleep or unconscious, so that's got nothing to do with it. It just strains my suspension of disbelief that Aiden wouldn't be coming down on those bastards like the wrath of an angry god.
As many people have said, Aiden's power is tied to Jodie's physical state. Yes, he can be active when she's unconscious, and often is, but he isn't particularly powerful. For instance, during Hunted, Aiden can mess with people on the train, but the most obvious effect he can produce is smacking Jodie's water bottle and what sounds like a nearly-empty cup of coffee. The server's cart rattles a little, and luggage falls down, but this is nowhere near the car-flipping, town-destroying wrath that Aiden is capable of when Jodie is awake. Not only that, there's quite a bit of indication that Jodie has at least some influence over Aiden through their psychic tether. During the Dinner, she can briefly control him through intense focus, painting her as the more powerful psychic force between the two of them. Since Jodie can restrain and manipulate Aiden, that means that she can also bolster and support him: If Jodie agrees with what Aiden is attempting, or if she's panicking and doesn't care what happens as long as the agitation is removed, Aiden can draw on Jodie's psychic energy to operate at his most powerful, and move the farthest distance from her. When Jodie is unconscious or unwilling, that energy is locked away and she pulls Aiden down into a weakened state, sometimes completely preventing him from acting autonomously. Being comatose is far more severe than being unconscious. Jodie's subsequent visions also indicate that not only was Aiden locked into the back of her mind during most of that period, her being so close to death also allowed him some access to the Infraworld, where he was able to pluck at the strings of time to collect the information which he showed her. Jodie even directly asks Aiden why he's showing her those things, and since she'd also said by that point that Aiden himself doesn't know what he is, this is the most likely scenario.
I think Aiden was exhausted. He had done the shield trick, a possession, a bunch of openings (one blowing a hole in a wall), and helped Jodie jump out from a window three stories up. All of that rapidly. Plus I'm damn sure that Aiden's the reason Jodie doesn't choke on smoke or get too hurt when she's close to fire. When the punks attacked her, Aiden probably couldn't lift so much as a stick.
Also, when Jodie was captured by the CIA brass, we saw that Aiden was just as weak as Jodie. Aiden's strength may be connected somewhat with Jodie's physical state. Tired for Jodie isn't a problem for Aiden but physically spent might be.
This also applies to when Stan finds Jodie. In other chapters, Aiden has no issues with warding off the dark spirits that haunt Jodie, but in this one he can barely hold them off for a couple of seconds at a time. Jodie is weak to the point of collapsing, so Aiden is weak too. The best he can do is get help for her, because he doesn't have the power at the time to help Jodie himself.
Honestly, Aiden's limits were one of the few things that was never really fleshed out. The Homeless chapter isn't the only chapter that makes it seems Aiden does nothing when he could do everything. There are two times Jodie is knocked out by the CIA and she seems to be in perfect health during both those times, why doesn't Aiden do anything? We know Jodie unconscious doesn't stop him, why doesn't he kill those people or hell stop them before they knock her out?
Sorry if this isn't the answer you were looking for, but Aiden's powers are completely arbitrary, by default. Word of God said it himself, he does what the plot requires him to do. So the reason he never uses his amazing powers to solve any situation is just drama. The game is never explicit as to what his limits are, or if he has any. The only thing that managed to stop him was a neuro-acid, whatever the hell that is, and he could still do somethings with that. tl;dr: Aiden is Deus ex Machina incarnate, don't bother trying to make sense of him.
Visiting the Undersea base
Jodie and Ryan going to the undersea base operated by fictional Asian dudes. Jodie has to go because she's the only one who can pilot the sub, but Ryan is about as useful as the bag of dicks he is, so why the hell does he go instead of the ASIAN DUDE?
The obvious answer is that David Cage wanted to push the Jodie/Ryan relationship. Which, because of the non-chronological order of the story, wasn't that well written to begin. Though if I were to guess the in-universe reason? ...They're not that good at their jobs. For a team of CIA agents they come off as really bitching, conflicted with the mission, not to mention they don't really even have a plan. Like literally, they just came out there with zero plan. THAT'S CIA!!
Well, yeah, but Ryan sucks at his job too, unless you count "being a bag of dicks" as part of his job. He's awesome at that. But then again we are subject to David Cage's vision, so maybe it wouldn't matter even if he wasn't.
I was talking about the whole team, including Ryan. Remember he was the guy who called Jodie's plan of using the sub "suicide". One wonders what his "plan" might have been.
Ryan and Jodie's unproffesionalism
Also, isn't Ryan Jodie's superior officer? I don't exactly have a lot of experience with military policy or anything, but isn't them having a sexual relationship seriously against the rules?
It's called fraternization, and it is forbidden under UCMJ Article 134, grounds for court martial. Then again, obeying illegal orders is grounds for court martial (Article 90). The CIA is a civilian agency, though, and does not follow the UCMJ. They do have similar regulations, though. But when has fraternization ever stopped a story teller from shoehorning in a romantic subplot?
Its also against the rules to force a girl through 3 years of CIA training, force her to then join said agency as an assassin, trick her into killing an innocent man, telling her to get over it because she's human property, then falsely labeling her a traitor. It may just be me, but I think fraternization is on the shallow end of the violations of rules, laws, and basic human rights that are being presented here.
Oh, and if she's emotionally attached to her superior, then she's easier to manipulate. So, there's that.
The US Military vs the Dimension
Why did the US military have the idea they could control and 'conquer' the other dimension when every single other encounter lead to the massive loss of life with no real countermeasures aside from Jodie and Aiden?
Same thing with the atomic bomb, or biological warfare, or any time some army discovers anything that they can use to have an advantage against other armies: They're dicks. Any casualties are just acceptable losses.
Honestly, I'd stick with the atomic bombs over the entities. Sure they could be a potential war asset, but they have actively proven hostile to every living thing on no less then two separate occasions prior, both of which ended up with everyone pretty much dead. Not to mention, atomic bombs and biological weapons seem to be more secure, because if something goes wrong with the containment field the entities will pretty much cause the world to end.
And yet, there is Aiden: unliving proof that the entities can be contained and controlled in a non-omnicidal fashion. This, ultimately, is what they are trying to do with all the constant research and experiments that have gone on for Jodie's life, the Condenser experiments, Jodie's militarization, etc. The military's end goal: mass-producing Aiden. Think of everything Jodie and Aiden were able to accomplish on that disastrous mission to assassinate Jamal; now imagine an army of tens of thousands of ghost-equipped soldiers who can do that. It's enough to get a four-star general's mouth watering. The atomic bomb is worthless. MAD ensures that it can't actually be deployed. Aiden doesn't have the problem of wiping out all life on this earth the moment anyone tries to send him into a combat zone; to the mind of a military tactician, whosoever who controls the Intraworld will be the most unstoppable military force on the planet.
Except Aiden was attached to Jodie her entire life (and by extension his entire life), where as the plan is to attached the hostile entities who have not been attached to anyone at any point and with the assumption that it'll work out just the same. It's like seeing someone with a normally wild animal that they've raised since that animal was an infant and going "Yeah, I could do that!" But because they lack the means to acquiring an infant wild animal they go into the woods, tear a fully grown specimen from its environment, and give it to a random guy and going "And do what they did with theirs!" It is just bound to go wrong. I doubt the military guys are ignorant of how long Aiden has been with Jodie and Jodie can very well talk to Aiden, so even if they assumed Aiden was from the Infraworld and somehow got attached to Jodie they could ask (or at least had Dawkins ask at some point) Jodie if Aiden was from the Infraworld.
Is there any possible in-universe explanation for the limits Aiden's powers constantly changing? Sometimes he can possess people, sometimes he can instantly kill them, and sometimes he can do neither. Sometimes he can travel around 100 feet from Jodie, and sometimes he can't get more than 20 feet away.
At several points in the game, it's stated/implied that there are certain places where the barrier between normal world and Infraworld is "thinner", with the most obvious locations being rift sites. This is where entities tend to appear. It could be that the closer Aiden is to the Infraworld, the more powerful he becomes. There also appears to be a link between his powers and Jodie's brain/consciousness. The CIA's neuro-acid renders him pathetically weak, and he is unable to do anything when the thugs in "Homeless" knock Jodie into a coma.
One reason is that he gets stronger as Jodie gets older. The first night that she spends at the DPA lab, she seems kind of happy because Aiden is finally able to start fighting back against the entities. Also, he tries very hard to kill her dad, but can't. By the time she's a teenager, he can do that sort of thing without a lot of strain.
Who is that woman at the end of the Embassy chapter who walks in on you in the bathroom, grabs the piece of paper you were writing on and then disappears from the game?
She was most likely a CIA mole, there so that Jodie could give her the notes without arousing some sort of suspicion.
Jodie is hated by kids
Why does every kid that Jodie encounters refer to her as a witch once they find out about her (Aiden's) powers? Given the time period this appears to take place in a lot of people would think she's either psychic or that it's freaking cool that she has a ghost for a friend. Unless you're in some kind of really sheltering, Bible Belt-style home you would only say someone's a witch if they had a long, hooked nose with a boil on it, had a black cat, and rode around on a broom cackling. I mean, the teens at the party were dicks, yes, but the kids in the snowball fight were actually having fun with her until Aiden overreacted and started choking the kid giving her the snow job.
Really, there's a couple different ways a group of teenagers could react to someone displaying supernatural powers: Fear, disbelief, excitement...but in no way would "tease and bully the supernatural kid, then go back to the party as if absolutely nothing happened" be one of them. Seriously, they go straight back to talking about teen stuff instead of THE FUCKING MAGIC POWERS they just saw.
Also, especially in the snowball scene, how do people instantly make the connection that Jodie caused the stuff that happened? Wouldn't it be a much more logical conclusion to assume that the kid started choking for non-supernatural reasons?
For the same reason they start calling her a witch as if they're in colonial Salem: because David Cage is a genius and you must not question him. Never mind that the much more likely reason a kid engaging in physical exertion in below-freezing temperatures would be an asthma attack or that, having never been allowed out of her yard, the other kids wouldn't even know her name. David Cage is a genius.
The kid who was giving Jodie the snowjob probably didn't feel as though he was simply choking, but as though he was being strangled by a pair of spectral hands, which is why he accuses her of trying to kill him somehow. And even though the neighborhood kids didn't know Jodie well, they would've at least seen her going to and from her car, and their parents would have given her some idea of who she was. As for the teens at the party, Jodie and Aiden didn't really go beyond what you might see on an episode of Ghost Hunters in demonstrating his powers; they didn't even do anything that would prove that someone other than Jodie was responsible for the disturbances. But they did do enough to scare and unsettle them, which is a big part of why they lash out at her shortly afterwards; from their perspective, she's just weird and creepy, and people fear what they don't understand.
Useless Containment Fields
What exactly did the portable containment fields do? They don't seem to protect against the ghost monsters, because one attacks Cole while his is on and he gets badly wounded (and, depending on whether or not you heal him, he can die). They also don't seem necessary to survive near the portal, as Ryan showed.
Cole got smacked pretty hard by an entity, and he was merely injured. If he hadn't had the containment field, it would have been like anyone else we'd seen getting smacked by an entity: Killed immediately. It's not perfect but better than nothing.
The Birthday Party
The kids at the party, more specifically the birthday girl: They have at least heard Jodie has special powers that may make her dangerous. So, why, after receiving her present (a rare book of poetry) why doesn't she at the very least say 'thank you' but instead reacts like Jodie got her something truly awful, bully her, burn her with cigarettes and then lock her in a cupboard? Because there's absolutely no way provoking a girl with psychic powers could possibly go wrong...
Because they're 'teenagers'. They didn't know the full extent of Jodie's powers, and clearly didn't think a lot of her anyway; they must have thought she wouldn't react because she was so mousey looking and shy. They seem like the sort of people who bully those weaker than themselves, given how naturally they take to tormenting Jodie, but they made the mistake of picking on someone who 'appeared' to be weak.
Why the hell did Jodie even have to go to this party again if everyone there is apparently the stereotypical bully you find in tween flicks?
If I remember this right Norman and the kids mom were business partners so Norman basically said Jodie would show up and then sent her. Not saying thats a good plan, but thats pretty much what happened.
Jodie found out about the party because she worked with Kirsten's mother in the paranormal department, and she was the one who pestered Nathan to go rather than the other way around; as Nathan puts it, she begged him for weeks. Jodie wants friends and a social life like anyone else; she only starts getting cold feet once she actually gets there and realizes how out-of-place she'll feel (and she knows the dress and the lame present are a bad look). Even then, it's important to remember that before Jodie starts getting pestered about Aiden's powers, the party goes pretty damn well for her, all things considered; she can sip a beer, smoke a joint, and even get her first kiss. But when things go downhill, it confirms Nathan's worst fears, which is why he shuts Jodie down so hard the next time around.
Related to the party scene: When Jodie says that the book has rare poems by Edgar Allen Poe, the birthday girl responds with "Edgar Allen who?" I get that they were trying to make her ignorant, but the girl is in high school for crying out loud. She should at least know who Poe is.
She probably knows who Edgar Allen Poe is, but pretends not to to high-hat Jodie and to drive home how much she dislikes the present.
Instant Maternity wear?
How did Tuesday's pants go from being maternity wear to magically fitting her like a glove after she gave birth?
You do know that women's stomachs don't melt away when they give birth? There's still something there for a day or two.
In addition to the time it takes for a uterus to return to pre-pregnancy size, there's also the possibility of wearing them below the bump and/or elastic material.
With everyone's insides being varied, some women can and have gone back to their pre-pregnancy relatively quicker than many others.
Ryan's not a good guy or is he?
On what basis were they assuming players would feel anything but revulsion for Ryan? Young Jodie is basically being handed off to the CIA without her having any say in the matter, and his response to her protesting this is to call it an 'adolescent temper tantrum' and generally insult and antagonize her for not wanting to be a government slave for the rest of her life. Later, he lies to her and manipulates her into killing a democratically elected leader before basically citing the Nuremberg Defense as his justification. The guy is a Grade A dick and yet the writers seem to be operating under the assumption that Jodie should be falling for this guy, in spite of how contemptible they've written him to be.
I felt largely the same on my first playthrough, but a few instances softened my distaste for him. Specifically, during Separated, if you project as Aiden to listen in on Ryan and Nathan, you learn that Nathan was supposed to have been preparing Jodie for this for at least a few days, if not weeks and months. Ryan expected to arrive and find her pretty much ready to go, and he feels for Nathan, but he's also far too much of a military man to even think of disobeying orders. He also doesn't want to sugarcoat anything for Jodie, who he has almost certainly been led to believe by MacGrath is a living weapon. We also learn later that he had an abusive childhood, to the point that he left home at sixteen, and probably isn't great with kids. Another part of his timeline? He and his ex-wife, with whom he says he always had a less-than-perfect relationship, had been separated for a little over two years at the start of The Dinner, which is a little over three years after Separated, based on Welcome to the CIA's timeline. Ryan wasn't just being an asshole to be an asshole during those chapters, he was experiencing the lead-up and fallout to what was probably a very messy divorce.
Misplaced Language?
Why are the denizens of an ambiguously East African country speaking Farsi, a language native to Iran?
Actually, Farsi is spoken in other regions besides Iran and the surrounding nations. In this case, it might be an oversight (that chapter was probably supposed to be set somewhere in the Middle East), the denizens are a community of Persian immigrants in that country, or the game takes place in an AU where Persians (or some) settled in East Africa (Note that Arabic is also spoken in east Africa).
Soul Eviction and Containment Fields.
How did Nathan's soul escape his body when he shot himself? He was wearing a containment field - you know, the ones that block entities and spirits from passing through?
The Containment Fields probably only work on outside spirits from the Infra World, not people wearing the containment fields who unalive themselves.
Aiden protecting Jodie
Okay so why does Aiden only sometimes protect Jodie? I mean, I understand the whole 'when she's weak he's also weak' thing, but that doesn't explain much. So, while you're on the boat and captured by Asians, Jodie and Aiden get magically separated. Okay. Then they reunite. Okay. So then why, after they're together again, and the Asian commander or whoever is attacking Jodie, does Aiden do nothing? I understand that it is a quick-time event, but if Aiden saw Jodie getting almost killed by a crazy person, why does he do nothing but watch? Wouldn't it make sense for him to intervene and stop the fight or something?
Considering the fact that the fall of the containment field released a swarm of vicious entities into the base, Aiden may well have been busy keeping those beasts at bay.
What was the point of the Native American chapter? It seems the whole game wouldn't have changed in the slightest if it wasn't included. There's no real reference in Story and it seems to just waste time.
Yeah, all it offered was a "Jodie and Aiden's existence is part of some magic prophecy because end of the world plot ooh!~" and shit, but that could have been brought up in a different chapter. In all honesty, I think it was just there because they're... Commonly played as mystics, and David Cage is pretty fuckin' racist, I mean look at his idea of black people in the other two games of his (and Asians, going by Indigo Prophecy). It was just unnecessary.
I'll have to disagree with the above. "Navajo" might not provide much plot, but it provides yet another good glimpse at Jodie's life between cutting ties and rejoining the CIA. Additionally, it serves as worldbuilding. The modern-day DPA is not the first to make use of the Infraworld for warfare (Foreshadowing, much?), and the carvings Jodie finds at the end seem less like a prophecy, and more like an indication that there were people like Jodie before.
Racist or not, I'm not about to complain about the Navajo chapter. After all the other crap Jodie goes through, this is the only chapter where a) no one is trying to exploit her for her powers, b) she doesn't get driven out by the government, and c) it's fun. I admit, I find David Cage's storylines (if not his characters, his biases, or his storytelling) pretty compelling, and I can't even begin to explain how loudly I cheered when you had the option to completely reject Ryan at the end and go back to the sweet, safe, remote ranch with a family that doesn't think Jodie is a witch or a monster or an angel and she still gets ponies and a hot dude. It's only a waste of time if you don't value Jodie as a person, not that anybody could really fault you for thinking that any woman in a David Cage story might not be a genuine reflection of an actual human being.
Weird Physics
How is this happening? Jodie is on a train moving in a straight line, not an airplane going through turbulence.
How Aiden got his name?
Did Jodie just simply give Aiden his name herself? It seems like quite an exotic name to believe that she thought of it when she was that young. Unless his ability to communicate verbally with her is stronger then i realized and its actually the name he gave himself(or heard his mother give him). But one way or another the game never really makes it clear, where did Aiden get his name?
Maybe she heard it somewhere and liked it? Like in a book or another classmate of hers? It's not THAT unusual.
I'm pretty sure Aiden was born with his name, and Jodie either just "knows" what it is (due to their mental link) or learned it from him. Aiden telling Jodie his name isn't out of the question, since they seem to be having actual conversations at certain points, but since he can manipulate objects, he could've just written it down.
Norah Gray's purpose
Exactly why did they decide to keep Norah Gray alive? They weren't siphoning her psychic abilities to power a machine or anything, they just kind of sedated her and left her in a hospital so that Jodie could find her years later and make the player feel emotions. You could argue that she was there as bait, but that would require the "let's open a portal into the ghost zone what could possibly go wrong" government to somehow know the exact kind of person Jodie would develop into (i.e. one who gives enough of a crap about some woman she's never even met to risk blowing her cover).
For the same reason they sedate Jodie rather than kill her outright later on; there's no way to know what kind of threat she'd pose from the Infraworld with her abilities.
Entities from the Infra
During The Condenser we see Entities fresh from the Infra world possess some people. They all proclaim their wish to kill Jodie in perfect English. Later on in the game Aiden, who has spent his entire life(??) around English speaking humans, possesses Cole and barely manages to grunt out a vague noise. So...why? He clearly understands what Jodie tells him to do when she speaks out loud, and he writes her a message at the end of the game, so it's not as though we're given any reason to believe he doesn't understand. Is there any reason an Entity who lives in the human world is less capable of using a human mouth effectively than Entities that exist in a world which, from what we've seen, doesn't even house creatures capable of being possessed?
Aiden did strangle on the umbilical cord so it is possible that he damaged his vocal cords therefore causing him to be mute even as an entity.
Except he's not using his vocal cords, he's using Cole's, and Cole is perfectly capable of speaking. Likely the writers just forgot the rules they had already established; the abilities of entities, especially Aiden, are pretty inconsistent anyway.
While Aiden is using Cole's vocal chords, Aiden never learned to talk. He learned English, he can write and communicate psychically, but actually manipulating one's mouth to make particular sounds is a skill one learns in infancy, which Aiden never got to experience.
The Dragon's Hideout Chapter
The Kazirstan research team in the "Dragon's Hideout" chapter set up their research base in an area that requires a submarine to reach and have entity-proof shields set up around the base that the scientists and soldiers can retreat behind at the first sign of trouble, and yet they "don't know what they're dealing with". The US government builds a condenser in some random building, accidentally unleashes entities that were only just able to be stopped because of Jodie, kills off and injures a ridiculous amount of their scientists, and then insists on invading and endangering the Kazirstan base - which seemed to be running fine before they interfered - all while building another, bigger condenser. And no one questions this at any point. Yes, Jodie didn't know how secure the foreign base was before she went there, but even after she gets back from the mission she doesn't stop to wonder whether what she did was a shitty thing to do. It says a lot when the guy who just stabbed out your partners eye is strangling you and you still sympathise with him when he starts screaming about the years of lost work.
Why would she think it was a "shitty thing to do"? Jodie hardly seems like the kind of person who would want a condenser arms race (think nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but worse). The CIA and the Pentagon are inept and hypocritical, sure, but that's the entire point, and leaving aside Jodie's desire to jump through enough hoops to be able to walk away from the whole thing, better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Plot Armour or too much of it
I know the answer is basically "because the plot required him not to", but damn, the Dinner chapter ends up establishing Aiden as capable of far greater precision control than is displayed anywhere else in the game, which raises the question of why Jodie never tried to teach him how to pick up a pen and write. If he can levitate a bottle of wine and pour a glass without sending it hurtling across the room, it shouldn't be that hard to write simple messages instead of having to shake things to get people's attention.
Aiden probably can write messages with a pen if necessary, but it's usually easier for him not to bother. Those who have been around him long enough (Jodie, Cole, even Ryan, eventually) can understand his mood just by picking up on his aura, and anyone else is a stranger he wouldn't want to show himself to beyond whatever's necessary to scare them off.
happening? Jodie is on a train moving in a straight line, not an airplane going through turbulence.